$6,325,000 Settlement
A mother pregnant with monoamniotic-monochorionic (“mono-mono”) twins, where the twins share a single amniotic sac and placenta, experienced premature rupture of her membranes at 28 weeks’ gestation. Mono-mono twins face a high risk of umbilical cord entanglement and compression once the membranes rupture. Under the accepted standard of care, an emergency C-section is required unless continuous electronic fetal monitoring shows reassuring heart rates for both babies.
The hospital and the obstetrician failed to meet that standard. The monitoring done right after the membranes ruptured captured only one twin’s heart rate. After the mother was transferred, continuous fetal monitoring was not performed for an extended period. The only stretch of monitoring that recorded both twins lasted less than five minutes, and it showed that one baby’s heart rate had dropped dangerously low, a sign of fetal distress and oxygen deprivation. A biophysical profile taken earlier had already shown decreased fetal breathing movements and little or no amniotic fluid around that baby. We believed that this presentation required emergency delivery in order to prevent permanent neurological injury to one or both of the babies, but the C-section was not performed until hours later.
One twin was born without injury. The other suffered a hypoxic brain injury. A head ultrasound after birth provided some evidence that the baby had suffered a brain injury shortly prior to delivery as a result of the delay in delivery, and later imaging confirmed periventricular leukomalacia and hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), a pattern of brain damage linked to oxygen deprivation. The baby was later diagnosed with spastic cerebral palsy.
The defense argued that the baby’s umbilical cord blood gases were normal and that her injuries were caused solely by prematurity rather than oxygen deprivation in the womb. Our firm and our medical experts refuted these claims. We were able to demonstrate that the blood gas results were improperly obtained, in that they were drawn from only one vessel when the standard of care required a drawing of more than one vessel to confirm accuracy, and more than an hour after the documented distress (which allowed the metabolic condition of the blood to change before it would be accurately analyzed by the lab), so the results could not rule out a hypoxic injury. We further argued that prematurity could not explain why only one of two genetically identical twins, born at the same gestational age, developed cerebral palsy. We argued that cause of our client’s injury was compression of her umbilical cord shortly prior to delivery, causing oxygen deprivation and the resulting brain damage, which a timely C-section delivery would have prevented.
The case was settled on the morning of jury selection in Kings County Supreme Court. As part of the settlement, our client was admitted into the New York State Medical Indemnity Fund, which will provide her with free healthcare for life.
